In TIME‘s February 8 edition, managing editor Richard Stengel announced that the magazine will be hosting the inaugural Global Forum in conjunction with FORTUNE and CNN. The summit, Stengel says, will bring together “CEOs, world leaders and members of the Time 100” to discuss the shift in power towards the developing world. It will be hosted in June this year during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Sounds great. But what I found even more interesting was the glowing way TIME described my home city — as “an exquisitely beautiful place that is in many ways a model for the new Africa: diverse, entrepreneurial, forward-looking”.

OK. Maybe they’re glossing over the deep social divides, the inequality, the crime, the poverty. But TIME‘s right — Cape Town is indeed a beautiful place, and has huge potential as a bastion of tolerance and home for innovation. The more people who realise this, the greater the chance the city has of becoming an integrated, prosperous and globally relevant city.